The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  "Figures appeared between the wrecked cottages ahead, their hands high. Some of them being held up by friends. They were the first prisoners. Many of them were yellow with lyddite. Yellow men out of the white curtain of light. One walked straight towards me, lurching, with his head tilted, as if in a dream, and fell straight into a deep crater. A moment later he reappeared, crawling up over the edge, then slowly standing. Lurching forward again. Other prisoners came weeping. One vomited blood in front of us, and collapsed.

  "Then we were running towards the village. We came into what must have been once a street. Desolation. Rubble, fragments of plastered wall, broken rafters, the yellow splashes of lyddite everywhere. The drizzle that had started again gleaming on the stones. On the skin of corpses. Many Germans had been caught in the houses. In one minute I saw a summary of the whole butcher's shop of war. The blood, the gaping holes, the bone sticking out of flesh, the stench of burst intestines — I am telling you this only because the effect on me, a boy who had never seen even a peacefully dead body before that day, was one I should never have predicted. It was not nausea and terror. I saw several men being sick, but I was not. It was an intense new conviction. Nothing could justify this. It was a thousand times better that England should be a Prussian colony. One reads that such scenes give the green soldier nothing but a mad lust to kill in his turn. But I had exactly the contrary feeling. I had a mad lust not to be killed."

  He stood up.

  "I have a test for you."

  "A test?"

  He went into his bedroom, returned almost at once with the oil lamp that had been on the table when we had dinner. In the white pool of light he put what he had brought. I saw a die, a shaker, a saucer, and a pillbox. I looked up at him on the other side of the table, at his severe eyes on mine.

  "I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Do you understand?"

  "Of course."

  "So in my perfect republic it would be simple. There would be a test for all young people at the age of twenty-one. They would go to a hospital where they would throw a die. One of the six numbers would mean death. If they threw that they would be painlessly killed. No mess. No bestial cruelty. No destruction of innocent onlookers. But one clinical throw of the die."

  "Certainly an improvement on war."

  "You think so?"

  "Obviously."

  "You are sure?"

  "Of course."

  "You said you never saw action in the last war?"

  "No."

  He took the pillbox, and shook out, of all things, six large molars; yellowish, two or three with old fillings.

  "These were issued to certain German troops during the last war, for use if they were interrogated." He placed one of the teeth on the saucer, then with a small downward jab of the shaker crushed it; it was brittle, like a liqueur chocolate. But the odor of the colorless liquid was of bitter almonds, acrid and terrifying. He hastily removed the saucer at arm's length to the far corner of the terrace; then returned.

  "Suicide pills?"

  "Precisely. Hydrocyanic acid." He picked up the die, and showed me six sides. I smiled. "You want me to throw?"

  "I offer you an entire war in one second."

  "Supposing I don't want it?"

  "Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived."

  "Wouldn't a corpse be rather embarrassing for you?" I was still smiling, but it was wearing thin.

  "Not at all. I could easily prove it was suicide." He stared at me, and his eyes went through me like a trident through a fish. With ninety-nine persons out of a hundred, I would have known it was a bluff; but he was different, and a nervousness had hold of me before I could resist it.

  "Russian roulette."

  "But less fallible. These pills work within a few seconds."

  "I don't want to play."

  "Then you are a coward, my friend." He leant back and watched me.

  "I thought you believed brave men were fools."

  "Because they persist in rolling the die again and again. But a young man who will not risk his life even once is both a fool and a coward."

  And he had me. It was absurd, but I could not let my bluff be called.

  I reached for the shaker.

  "Wait." He leant forward, and put his hand on my wrist; then placed a tooth by my side. "I am not playing at make-believe. You must swear to me that if the number is six you will take the pill." His face was totally serious. I felt myself wanting to swallow.

  "I swear."

  "By all that is most sacred to you."

  I hesitated, shrugged, and said, "By all that is most sacred to me."

  He held out the die and I put it in the shaker. I shook it loosely and quickly and threw the die. It ran over the cloth, hit the brass base of the lamp, rebounded, wavered, fell.

  It was a six.

  Conchis was absolutely motionless, watching me. I knew at once that I was never, never going to pick up the pill. I could not look at him. Perhaps fifteen seconds passed. Then I smiled, looked at him and shook my head.

  He reached out again, his eyes still on me, took the tooth beside me, put it in his mouth and bit it and swallowed the liquid. I went red. Still watching me, he reached out, and put the die in the shaker, and threw it. It was a six. Then again. And again it was a six. He spat out the empty shell of the tooth.

  "What you have just decided is precisely what I decided that morning forty years ago at Neuve Chapelle. You have behaved exactly as any intelligent human being should behave. I congratulate you."

  "But what you said? The perfect republic?"

  "All perfect republics are perfect nonsense. The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?"

  "But the die was loaded."

  "Patriotism, propaganda, professional honor, esprit de corps — what are all those things? Cogged dice. There is just one small difference, Nicholas. On the other table these are real." He put the remaining teeth back in the box. "Not just ratafia in colored plastic."

  He turned out the lamp.

  20

  "The middle six hours of that day we passed in waiting. The Germans hardly shelled us at all. They had been bombarded to their knees. The obvious thing would have been to attack at once. But it takes a very brilliant general, a Napoleon, to see the obvious.

  "About three o'clock the Ghurkas came alongside us and we were told an attack on the Aubers Ridge was to be launched. We were to be the first line. Just before half-past three we fixed bayonets. I was beside Captain Montague, as usual. I think he knew only one thing about himself. That he was fearless, ready to swallow the acid. He kept looking along the lines of men beside him. He scorned the use of a periscope, and stood and poked his head over the parapet. The Germans still seemed stunned.

  "We began to walk forward. Montague and the sergeant major called incessantly, keeping us in line. We had to cross a cratered ploughfield to a hedge of poplars, and then, across another small field, lay our objective, a bridge. I suppose we had gone about half the distance we had to cover, and then we broke into a trot and some of the men began to shout. The Germans seemed to stop firing altogether. Montague called triumphantly. 'On, lads! Victoree!'

  "They were the last words he ever spoke. It was a trap. Five or six machine guns scythed us like grass. Montague spun round and fell at my feet. He lay on his back, staring up at me, one eye gone. I collapsed beside him. The air was nothing but bullets. I pressed my face right into the mud, I was urinating, certain that at any moment I should be killed. Someone came beside me. It was the sergeant major. Some of the men were firing back, but blindly. In despair. The sergeant major, I do not know why, began dragging Montague's corpse backwards. Feebly, I tr
ied to help. We slipped down into a small crater. The back of Montague's head had been blown away, but his face still wore an idiot's grin, as if he were laughing in his sleep, mouth wide open. A face I have never forgotten. The last smile of a stage of evolution.

  "The firing stopped. Then, like a flock of frightened sheep, everyone who survived began to run back towards the village. I as well. I had lost even the will to be a coward. Many were shot in the back as they ran, and I was one of the few who reached the trench we had started from unhurt — alive, even. We were no sooner there than the shelling began. Our own shells. Owing to the bad weather conditions, the artillery were shooting blind. Or perhaps still according to some plan established days before. Such irony is not a by-product of war. But typical of it. "A wounded lieutenant was now in command. He crouched beside me, with a great gash across his cheek. His eyes burned dully. He was no longer a nice upright young Englishman, but a neolithic man. Cornered, uncomprehending, in a sullen rage. Perhaps we all looked like that. The longer one survived the more unreal it was.

  "More troops came up with us, and a colonel came round. Aubers Ridge must be captured. We had to have the bridge by nightfall. But I had meanwhile had time to think.

  "I saw that this cataclysm must be an expiation for some barbarous crime of civilization, some terrible human lie. What the lie was, I had too little knowledge of history or science to know then. I know now it was our believing that we were fulfilling some end, serving some plan — that all would come out well in the end, because there was some great plan over all. Instead of the reality. There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves."

  He was silent; I could just make out his face, his staring to sea, as if Neuve Chapelle was out there, gray mud and hell, visible.

  "We attacked again. I should have liked simply to disobey orders and stay in the trench. But of course cowards were treated as deserters, and shot. So I clambered up with the rest when the order came. A sergeant shouted at us to run. Exactly the same thing happened as earlier that afternoon. There was a little firing from the Germans, just enough to bait the trap. But I knew that there were half a dozen eyes watching down their machine guns. My one hope was that they would be truly German. That is, methodical, and not open fire until the same point as before. "We came to within fifty yards of that point. Two or three bullets richocheted close by. I clasped my heart, dropped my rifle, staggered. Just in front of me I had seen a large shell-crater, an old one. I stumbled, fell and rolled over the edge of it. I heard the cry 'Keep on!' I lay with my feet in a pool of water, and waited. A few seconds later there was the violent unleashing of death I had expected. Someone leapt in the other side of the shell-hole. He must have been a Catholic, because he was gabbling Ave's. Then there was another scuffle and I heard him go in a falling of bits of mud. I drew my feet out of the water. But I did not open my eyes until the firing had

  stopped.

  "I was not alone in that shell hole. Half in, half out of the water opposite me was a grayish mass. A German corpse, long dead, half eaten by rats. Its stomach gaped, and it lay like a woman with a stillborn child beside it. And it smelt . . . it smelt as you can imagine.

  "I stayed in that crater all night. I accustomed myself to the mephitic stench. It grew cold, and I thought I had a fever. But I made up my mind not to move until the battle was over. I was without shame. I even hoped the Germans would overrun our positions and so allow me to give myself up as a prisoner.

  "Fever. But what I thought was fever was the fire of existence, the passion to exist. I know that now. A delirium vivens. I do not mean to defend myself. All deliria are more or less antisocial, and I speak clinically, not philosophically. But I possessed that night an almost total recall of physical sensations. And these recalls, of even the simplest and least sublime things, a glass of water, the smell of frying bacon, seemed to me to surpass or at least equal the memories of the greatest art, the noblest music, even my tenderest moments with Lily. I experienced the very opposite of what the German and French metaphysicians of our century have assured us is the truth: that all that is other is hostile to the individual. To me all that is other seemed exquisite. Even that corpse, even the squealing rats. To be able to experience, never mind that it was cold and hunger and nausea, was a miracle. Try to imagine that one day you discover you have a sixth, a till then unimagined new sense — something not comprehended in feeling, seeing, the conventional five. But a far profounder sense, the source from which all others spring. The word 'being' no longer passive and descriptive, but active . . . almost imperative.

  "Before the night was ended I knew that I had had what religious people would call a conversion. A light in heaven indeed shone on me, for there were constant star shells. But I had no sense of God. Only of having leapt a lifetime in one night."

  He was silent for a moment. I wished there was someone beside me, an Alison, some friend, who could savor and share the living darkness, the stars, the terraces, the voice. But they would have had to pass through all those last months with me. I had the comforting sense that this terrace, this strange story-telling and meeting, was my reward. The passion to exist: I forgave myself my failure to die.

  "I am trying to describe to you what happened to me, what I was. Not what I should have been. Not the rights and wrongs of conscientious objection. I beg you to remember that. "Before dawn there was another German bombardment. They attacked at first light, their generals having made exactly the same mistake as ours the day before. They suffered even heavier casualties. They got past my crater and to the trenches we had attacked from, but they were driven back again almost at once. All I knew of this was the noise. And the foot of a German soldier. He used my shoulder for a support while he was firing.

  "Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed — thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes — because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself — and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.

  "At midnight I crawled back to the village on my stomach. I was afraid I might be shot by a startled sentry. But the place was manned by corpses, and I was in the middle of a desert of the dead. I found my way down a communication trench. There, too, only silence and corpses. Then a little further on I heard English voices ahead, and called out. It was a party of stretcher-bearers, passing round for a final ascertaining that only the dead remained. I said I had been knocked out by a shell blast.

  "They did not doubt my story. Stranger things had happened. From them I learnt where what was left of my battalion was. I had no plan, nothing but the instinct of a child to return to its home. But as the Spanish say, a drowning man soon learns to swim. I knew I must be officially dead. That if I ran away, at least no one would be running after me. By dawn I was ten miles behind the lines. I had a little money and French had always been the lingua franca of my home. I found peasants who sheltered and fed me that next day. The next night I marched again, over the fields, always westward, across the Artois towards Boulogne.

  "A week later, traveling always like this, like the émigrés in the 1790's, I arrived there. It was full of soldiers, and of military police, and I was near despair. Of course it was impossible to board a returning troop-ship without papers. I thought of presenting myself at the docks and saying that my pocket had been picked . . . but I lacked the impudence to carry it off. Then one day fate was kind to me. She gave me an opportunity to pick pockets myself. I met a soldier from the Rifle Brigade who was very drunk, and I made him drunker. I caught the leave ship while he, poor man, was still snoring in a room above an estaminet near the station.

  "And then my real troubles began. But I have talked enough."

  21

  There was silence. The crickets chirped. Some night bird, high overhead, croaked primevally in the stars.

  "What happened when you got home?"

  "It is lat
e."

  "But —"

  "Tomorrow."

  He lit the lamp. As he straightened up from adjusting the wick, he stared at me.

  "You are not ashamed to be the guest of a traitor to his country?"

  "I don't think you were a traitor to the human race."

  We moved towards his bedroom windows.

  "The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed."

  "I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self."

  He turned.

  "You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good."

  He led the way through to my room, and lit the lamp there for me.

  "Good night, Nicholas."

  "Good night. And . . ."

  But his hand was up, silencing me and what he must have guessed were to be my thanks.

  Then he was gone.

  * * *

  When I came back from the bathroom, I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to one. I undressed and turned out the lamp, then stood a moment by the open window. There was a vague smell of drains in the still air, of a cesspool somewhere. I got into bed, and lay thinking about Conchis.

  He seemed a more human person, a much more human person, than he had before; yet there was a kind of professionalism, an air of having rehearsed the narrative, or at any rate, of having told it before — to Leverrier and Mitford? — that took away a little from the frankness and impact of the confession. I knew that I must be getting close to his real purpose in inviting me. For some reason he wanted me to hear these things, to be impressed by them. They were not casual reminiscings. That was why the good night had followed so abruptly on the end of the story-telling; he had wanted to create a feeling of to-be-continued; to leave me in doubt about him, speculating.